Description:
Looking for flexible hours and a chance to build up your portfolio while working 30 miles from the beaches of the Florida Panhandle?

The Crestview News Bulletin is seeking a Sports Editor to lead coverage of three local high schools and two local middle schools.

The Crestview News Bulletin is a twice-weekly newspaper owned by Freedom Communications, Inc.

The Sports Editor would have four major duties:

1. Lead News Bulletin coverage of varsity sports at three area high schools and two area middle schools.

2. Lead coverage of Crestview-area sports for the Northwest Florida Daily News, a neighboring 40,000-circulation daily that is also part of Freedom Communications.
3. Produce concepts and content for Crestview News Bulletin football, basketball and baseball/softball special sections.

4. Lead coverage of community sports in the area, particularly during the summer months.

The Sports Editor will get an opportunity to build a portfolio of feature, analysis and enterprise articles. Scheduling can be flexible because we are a twice-weekly paper.

This paper was bought by Freedom a little more than a year ago, when Freedom bought just about every non-daily in the Panhandle between Escambia Bay and the Apalachicola River. I don't know if the Crestview opening is related to the movement at the Daily News, but it wouldn't surprise me if the Daily News sports staff, which three years ago was at six people, goes to a four-person operation and leans on the weeklies and twice-weeklies to provide content.

The way I see it, this looks like a low-stress gig with pretty good pay. Oh yeah, it's close to the beach, too. Makes me wonder why I'm sitting here getting used as tornado bait right now.

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Or why I am sitting in ugly-ass West Texas.
The only drawback I see is trying to get back into daily papers.

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Getting back to a daily shouldn't be a problem. You have a 40k circ daily next door within your company and a 65k circ daily 45 minutes down the down in Pensacola (which once snagged the Bulletin's SE because he was doing a great job). Kyle Wright's good people, has a sports background and knows the job.

There has been a lot of movement between the weeklies and the two Freedom dailies (both Fort Walton Beach and Panama City) in recent years, so there definitely is an avenue to going back into daily work from Crestview.

The way I see it, this looks like a low-stress gig with pretty good pay. Oh yeah, it's close to the beach, too. Makes me wonder why I'm sitting here getting used as tornado bait right now.

Click to expand...

Or why I am sitting in ugly-ass West Texas.
The only drawback I see is trying to get back into daily papers.

Click to expand...

You'd sort of still be in daily papers, at least as a component of the job. The ad said you'd be leading coverage of Crestview-area sports for the Daily News as well, so you'd get daily bylines still.

I wonder if this isn't where papers are heading -- a central daily, a lot of satellite non-dailies feeding stories into the mothership. In theory it increases prep coverage (say, five non-daily SEs handling their areas for the daily as opposed to a smaller number of daily prep writers), with the bonus of local expertiese (having the one person cover two schools extensively instead of one sport or GAing it). That's assuming the non-daily SEs aren't hit with 3-5 daily assignments in addition to their non-daily tasks. But it seems like a nice idea if the powers that be understand how to strike a balance.